Writer's Worshop

When I first purchased books for the semester, I glanced at titles. When I saw the "Modern Library Writer's Workshop," by Stephen Koch I seriously might have groaned. I have gone through the English classes where they give you a text book on how to read a book, or how to write a paper and they all bore me tears. I figured this was going to be another one of those books. However, this book was an exception. Stephen Koch presents the idea of the writer and his/her text in a way that I wish every other author of how to write books do.

Koch breaks the chapters into ideas such as style, characters, and the life of a writer and the process they face.

The one chapter I really enjoyed was "The Writing Life," in particularly the section entitled A Writers Time. Koch says, "everything you write will take longer than you think it should." (45). I feel this is an important idea for people to realize. Writing isn't always an easy over night process. It can take days, weeks, months, or years. I have been working on a piece FOREVER, and when I first started it I thought I would be done in a month. 2 years later and I'm still working on it and I don't know when I will finish it. This is an idea we need to teach our students. Procrastination can happen, we all are guilty of it, however you need to allow yourself enough time to write. I hope to give my students adequate time for writing projects and I really hope they utilize it because they don't really understand how long it will take them.

This section also talks about writing everyday. It is important to maintain your progress as a writer to write every day. I feel I am fortunate because through all my different jobs, I do write everyday. Whether my writing is for pleasure, for business like in e-mails, or for class related things like lesson plans. I find myself in the summer not writing as much and I can tell it takes me sometime to get back into the swing of things come August. I think allowing students the chance to write every day is going to something I want to do. I think journaling or blogging will be important.

Over all, this book has a lot of great ideas and suggestions. I think this is an important text for every English teacher to have on their book shelf. I plan on using pages in lessons hopefully in the spring with my students.